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Say “nuclear reactor” and what leaps to mind is a giant machine, powerful enough to run an entire city, with thousands of moving parts.

But UPower Technologies has a different concept: a nuclear power plant that is mostly built in a factory, and arrives on site in two standard shipping containers. After set-up, it runs a cluster of buildings or a village. The reactor is more like a nuclear battery, with no moving parts.

For people worried about climate (including me) it's distressing to see the attack, because the two men agree on the fundamental point, that we need a vigorous global campaign to prevent an awful destabilization of the climate. It's a shame to see supporters of that idea falling out with each other when their key point is not yet a universally-held view.

The following is a guest post by Alex Flint, NEI’s Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs. For a Q&A with him on the nuclear energy industry’s legislative priorities for 2016, click here.

Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his eighth State of the Union address. For the first time, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) will sit behind him to his right, thinking “I could do that.” Of course, behind him to his left, Vice President Joseph Biden will be thinking the same thing but with the sorrowful knowledge that his time has passed. Finally, in front of him, at least a dozen U.S. Senators, some of whom are currently running for President, will also be thinking, “I could do that.”

The pomp and circumstance is always a bit fun. I always look around to determine which member of the cabinet doesn’t attend — it’s a nasty little Cold War flashback, but at least someone is thinking about these things.

Welcome,
luminant friends, to 2016, and let it be a sweet 16 of potential and
possibility, accomplishment and achievement. 2016 has context, namely 2015, to
suggest its contours, so let’s take a look back at some of the year’s
highlights both within and without the nuclear sphere to see if we can at least
divine the outline of the year to come. The past is not prologue, it is all the
earlier chapters in an ongoing story.
The value of nuclear energy to United States energy policy became clearer than
ever in 2015, but the struggle to have that value properly recognized became
one of the key issues of the year and will continue into and well beyond 2016.
As you’ll see, determining that value is not nuclear science; the shorthand
equation is that every nuclear energy facility represents an emission-free
economic powerhouse.

But its value has been neglected to the point that facilities are allowed to
shutter as economically unviable. An any time, but especially in 2015,
following the sign…